


AL 9000

by JudetheInvincible



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (you can forget the probably), Allergies, Allura is Probably a Lesbian, Also I want to write more wlw fics so, Altean time units, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, BAMF Allura (Voltron), BAMF Castle, Computer therapy, Everything is the same but the computer is alive, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Galra Keith (Voltron), Galra attacks, Gen, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I have no excuse I just like the idea, I haven't decided yet but it's gonna happen, I might beat on Lance, I'm not sorry, Insensitive Allura, Keith is a cat, Keith likes pillows, Kieth's Problems, Lance's Insecurity, Languages, Lesbian Allura, No Sex, Not the whole plot but it's there, Paranoid Allura, Robots, Sentient Castle AU, Sentient Computers, She's just motivated by robots, Sleepovers, Someone is blasting Highway to Hell outside my window, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Space Uncle Coran (Voltron), That is unrelated to the empath thing btw, The paladins are a lot more helpless than we're supposed to think, Therapist friend, This cannot be debated, Tired Everyone, Tired Lance, Toaster Problems, and keith, blade of marmora, did I forget to specify pronouns, my side OTP is Shay/Nyma/Allura, nah, no lance is not an empath, people have allergies, probably Hunk or Keith, these lovely boys must share in my suffering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-10-06 11:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10333292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JudetheInvincible/pseuds/JudetheInvincible
Summary: The Castle of Lions isn't how Allura and Coran remember it.  Everyone knows it.  They won't stop telling the paladins to be careful around it, to be constantly on their guard.  Nothing seems to be wrong with it, as far as the non-Altean parts of the crew can tell, and everyone forgets about it easily when someone starts asking it about emotions.  And also cooking.  Messages are sent, secrets are discovered, and help is freely given through the computer by some unknown benefactor.  Who is it? Who figured out how to manipulate the software like this, and why are they doing it in the first place?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction so I'm not sure how well I've got the characterization down. Any feedback would be appreciated!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Fall of the Castle of Lions, the Castle seems odd. Lance is beaten up and dreams of raw emotion and screaming, and everyone (especially Lance) is very uncomfortable.

Screaming.

Lance was just aware enough to remember screaming and fear and guilt.

It was like a dream, slipping through his fingers, and only getting more distant the more he thought about it.

He drifted out of the healing pod and zigzagged around the room helplessly.  The rest of the crew was huddled in a circle over... there, but his steering was nonfunctional at best, and it took him a couple tries to even get near them.

"You guys having a clock party?" he asked drowsily as he meandered closer to them.  He felt weighed down as if gravity was working extra hard to make him miserable.

"Aw, Lance, you just ruined it!" Hunk replied grouchily. Abruptly his expression did a u-turn and shifted into glee. "Hey, Lance!"

Lance could feel his bones being crushed by Hunk's hug.  He suddenly knew exactly what it felt like to be a squeaky toy.  He stumbled through a half-assed flirtation with Allura, trying to convince everyone that he was  _fine_ , and made it to the dining room where he consumed the food goo with previously undiscovered vigor.  Keith had the audacity to insinuate that they had shared a "bonding moment," Pidge was apparently a girl which somehow no one else was surprised by, and Hunk had got himself a girlfriend.  All in all, quite an eventful meal.

Although this did leave Lance with some questions as to whether or not he'd  _really_ only spent a quintant in the pod.

Everything seemed to be going too fast and there was barely even a break long enough to shower, much less to sleep or eat a full meal.

Not that spare time seemed to matter; whenever his mind drifted he remembered the screams the echoed through his mind.  He couldn't quite place where it was from or who was screaming, but the terror that accompanied it was unmistakeable.  He drummed his fingers agitatedly while the Castle took off and could barely bring himself to focus on everything around them.

He blinked and felt distinct pain.  Its effect was dizzying; he groaned and pressed his hand to his forehead.

Keith glanced at him from chair directly in front of Lance's on the bridge.

"Hey, Lance, you okay?" He sounded genuinely concerned, but Lance shook his head and put his hand down in the most inconspicuous way he could.  It still ended up clenched, but at least it was out of sight.

"I'm fine, Mullet.  You?"

* * *

Hunk could not keep himself from pacing or talking himself in circles.  Although, a better description of his apparent thought process might be "an ominously descending spiral of anxiety and second-guessing." While the rest of his team was with Hunk near the stairs, Lance was still sitting in his absurdly uncomfortable chair on the opposite side of the bridge.

He was trying his best to appear relaxed, but his shoulders were rising towards his ears the longer he thought.

Where had he heard the screaming? It wasn't entirely human screaming, although "organic screaming" was probably more appropriate given that the only humans to go out this far into space were either on the Castle's bridge or sitting in Galra cells.  It was high-pitched and robotic.  Lance had seen Star Wars enough times to be instantly reminded of R2-D2.  But it didn't seem to match.  The sounds were similar, but not identical.  He must have heard it elsewhere.  It was just in his head as far as he could tell; no one else had been having the same headaches.

Did that mean it wasn't real? Or that he was going insane?

It was probably just a dream.  It must've been.

It couldn't have been anything else.

Lance was forcibly removed from his existential crisis by an alarm going off at Coran's station.  It didn't take very long to hear that it was a distress beacon and that a ship had lost power.  Glad for a distraction, Lance pushed himself out of his chair.  Hunk was adamant about sticking to their first priority and coming back to the less pressing issue later but he was quickly shot down by Allura.  A comparison of the Voltron Paladins to police floated through Lance's mind, but he ignored it in favor of getting ready for a landing.

The Paladins and Allura descended to the surface of the moon in a landing pod.  As soon as the doors opened, Lance noticed a hot alien chick, but his heart just wasn't in it.  The R2-D2 screaming was still playing as background music, and an overpowering sense of despair lingered in his brain.

There was no way he'd be able to flirt even half effectively with Nyma, as he realized she was called, if this was the way his brain was going to be.  He hung back and watched as Rolo was completely unimpressed by the introduction of the defenders of the universe.  Hunk panicked about his girlfriend constantly.  Nyma was quite dedicated to starting up a conversation with any of the paladins but overall they seemed disinterested.  For once, Lance was almost eager to do chores as long as it meant keeping his mind off the screaming and the pain.  He followed Hunk into the Castle and looked through the inventory with him.

"Hey man, are you okay?" Hunk asked after the third or fourth time Lance leaned against the wall in front of him for support. "You don't look so great, and you didn't even try a bad pick-up line on that girl.  You haven't really been yourself since you got out of the regeneration pod."

"Maybe the pod has side effects for non-Altean patients? I don't know.  My head is killing me, though.  Maybe I'm just tired." Hunk watched him and Lance caught on to his unease.  He tried to deflect Hunk's concern but to no avail.  A few minutes later and he was lying on his bed under a blanket that his friend had provided for him.

"Lance, just go to sleep now.  If your head still hurts later we can ask Allura if they have Tylenol or something similar.  See you later."

Just as he was slipping into sleep, a foreign feeling of caution burst into his head.  He was intrusively aware and groaned, knowing that he had to get up and check.

 _The lions aren't safe,_ the other mind thought.  _Don't trust the castaways.  Their technology is untrustworthy.  Keep the lions safe!_

Lance knew, at least in the back of his mind or somewhere partially conscious, that he wasn't the source of these thoughts.  It didn't matter.  If someone thought the lions were vulnerable it made sense for him to check on them.  The presence in his head could have been a lot of things; the Paladins knew next to nothing about space so who could say what it was.

Lance decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and just go make sure the lion were in their pods.

As he walked through the empty halls of the castle, he felt gradually more lightheaded.  He walked into walls, and after the third or seventh time it happened he stopped pushing off from the walls at all.  He wasn't in much of a hurry as everyone else was chatting up the stranded pilots but he still cursed his inability to walk with any speed.

After maybe half an hour, he reached the bridge.

"Castle," he called out deliriously.  Would that even work? He'd never seen Allura or Coran talk to the computer like an overgrown Siri, but it was space and anything was possible.

"Hello Blue Paladin," it replied.  Its voice was pleasant without sounding invested, and the words flowed surprisingly well.  Lance would have expected it to sound more like, well, like Siri; choppy with odd pronunciations.

"Where are the lions right now?" He wandered over to his chair but it seemed to have sunk back into the floor.  He deliberated for a second before sitting on the stairs.

"All five are in their hangars.  The Paladins are currently outside." The crystal above Allura's piloting station pulsed when it spoke.

"Okay... huh," he said without any attempt to be articulate. "And uh, what's wrong with their ship? I know they can't go anywhere but why? I wasn't paying enough attention when they told us..."

"A piece of thermal pipe in their engine is cracked.  However, there is no damage beyond that.  Would you like an analysis of the causes?" Lance nodded without thinking.

"Sure."

Graphs popped up at the pilot station as well as something that looked like a Wikipedia article.  When the computer referenced a certain source, it glowed and came to the front of the holograms.

"While cracks in thermal piping are not altogether unusual, if the break occurs mid flight it will damage the rest of the flaxum assembly.  As shown in this scan taken upon arrival, the only damage sustained is on the thermal pipe.  This implies falsehood.  The testimony of the Zraeffyn who calls themselves Rolo is that they 'limped to this moon about a week ago.'  Unlikely, given the information that is known.  Furthermore, the Zraeffyn and the Anolimite have primitive communication technology that is hidden from view and deliberately inconspicuous.  Additionally, both the Zraeffyn and Anolimite have heart rates that have exceeded the typical rate for their species and age, suggesting that they are nervous.  The Zraeffyn is engaging in a common strategy of their species which is slowing down their speech to avoid detection.  My recommendation is that you alert the other Paladins and apprehend or confront the crew of the class 2 Varginian cargo ship."

Alarmed, Lance shoved his helmet on his head and addressed his team.

"Guys, ask Rolo and Nyma why their flaxum assembly isn't burnt to a crisp." Hunk was the first to respond.

"See! I told you something was up!" The rest of the Paladins groaned.  Obviously, Hunk had been chatting their ears off about the unlikely damage on the ship.

"Yes, Hunk, you did," Keith replied, his voice heavy with irritation. "Lance, I thought you were taking a nap.  Why are you up, and where did this sudden suspicion come from?"

"I'll explain later.  Right now, just go get all that done." He flapped his arms vaguely at the holograms despite no one being in the room with him.

"Okay," Shiro said. "But when we get back we're talking about this."

"Yeah, yeah, I get you."

The skirmish with Rolo and Nyma was over in under a minute, but by the end of it, their ship really  _was_ inoperable.  Feeling a bit more vindictive than normal, the Paladins left them on the moon to wait for someone else to help them out.

Pidge had almost kidnapped Beezer, but Shiro had insisted that they leave it behind.

When all seven of the inhabitants of the Castle were in the bridge, Lance recounted the events leading up to the computer analyzing the ship.  He did omit the part about his dizzy spells and the bizarre intuition, but his team was too focused on the new abilities of the computer to pay much attention to the choppy narrative.

"Coran, could the ship really do that?" Allura asked.  Her forehead was creased and she was frowning.  Never a good sign.

"Well, it isn't impossible, I'll say that.  This computer was designed to adapt, and it already had the autonomous capability to reach its own conclusions from some evidence.  I wouldn't put anything past it, honestly."

Pidge was grinning and almost bouncing off the walls, a far cry from Allura's reaction.

"It's like space Sherlock Holmes! So cool!" Coran and Allura simply seemed puzzled, but that didn't stop the older Altean from answering with confidence.

"Like I said, anything's possible."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I've no idea if I'm supposed to capitalize "paladins" or not. When it's used in speech, I'm going to, and when it's just used in the narrative I won't. Please don't tar and feather me for it, it just looks weird to capitalize it if no one's speaking.
> 
> Also, I'm sorry about the wait between updates. School has not been kind to me and my writing time, so I'm writing this on my spring break.
> 
> edit: I was writing this on my spring break but that ended and between stressing about my geometry course and writing other stories, this one got left on the wayside.
> 
> edit edit: BUT NOW IT'S SUMMER AND I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SLEEP ANYMORE

"Alright, Paladins," said Allura in a hushed whisper. "The Castle's security system isn't supposed to be easy to circumnavigate, but Pidge and Coran built these bracelets to mask our location.  The Castle is normally able to locate life-forms and identify them, but we can't trust it.  The Galran crystal energy weakened our defenses, so who knows what it might have done to our computer."

She began passing out white bracelets to the paladins and demonstrated how to clip them on.

"Thank you, Princess," Shiro smiled.

"Hey, Lance, aren't you going to make a joke about Allura giving you jewelry?" asked Pidge insufferably.  Lance shook his head.

"Uh, Allura, are you sure we need to do this? The Castle seems fine... I mean, it's not trying to kill us or anything.  All it did was give us some information about people who were trying to cash in on a bounty for the lions.  That's not exactly criminal behavior." Lance clicked the bracelet around his wrist anyway and shook his hand out when it pinched.

"This isn't typical of Altean computers.  I think that this may be a consequence of the Galra energy corrupting it, not a natural evolution of its processes.  I'm sure Coran can explain it better than I can." She gestured towards the elder Altean without looking at him as she tried to help Hunk with his bracelet.

"But what about the Lions?" Pidge interjected before Coran could say anything.

"The Lions are different.  They were created with the help from almost twenty different cultures and were the brain-child of fifty scientists who were millennia ahead of their time.  They are more than Altean technology, and even if they were, they were built nearly 300 years after the castle.  They aren't of the same era." Coran fidgeted with his mustache under the scrutiny of the paladins. "Well, they're just different."

"Fine," Keith said after a pause. "But we live in this castle-ship.  How are we going to tip toe around it?"

"Keith's right.  It'll know everything we do.  It doesn't need to put trackers in our suits or anything.  If we get food, or if Hunk bakes, it'll be able to tell that we're in the kitchen.  If we turn on a training program, it'll know we're on the training deck.  If it intends to hurt us, it won't have any trouble with it." As usual, Shiro was obligated to look at the very worst side of the situation.

"Well, first, the Castle is actually a 'she,' probably, given that ships are referred to as 'she's.  And secondly, we can always confront her with information that upsets her parameters of reality if all else fails.  She might blow up, but you can you do?" Pidge shrugged with a grin and looked at her perplexed teammates. "What, did no one else ever watch Logan's Run?"

Shiro shook his head in as an unnoticeable way as he could.

"We could turn on a bunch of different systems at a time so that it- she, gets confused.” Hunk rubbed his wrist around the bracelet nervously. “If this bracelet hides where we actually are, I think we could do that.”

Pidge elbowed Hunk and smiled at him in encouragement.  He smiled back nervously.

“Excellent idea, number three!” said Coran as loudly as he dared.

 

* * *

 

 

The threat of the castle was more or less forgotten as they returned to the Balmera where Shay lived.

The emptiness of the tunnels made Lance’s skin crawl, and within half an hour his anxieties were given substance after all five paladins were trapped at the center of the Balmera.

“Allura? Can you come get us?” Lance asked hopefully.  Surprisingly, it was not the princess’ voice that answered.  Instead, it was the half-there voice of the Castle computer.

“Would that I could, Blue Paladin.” Pidge looked up at and stared wide-eyed at Lance, as if saying “who the hell taught her that phrase- I swear to god if you’ve been giving her a fucking thesaurus…” The computer continued smugly, as if she knew exactly the effect her speech was having. “Unfortunately, I do not have access to all of our power or capabilities at the moment.  We are under heavy fire from hostile Galra combatants, and someone has engaged the safe mode on my programs.  Without this, I might be able to do more.  Until then, we will have to make do with our limited shield system.  What else can I assist you with?”

“Computer, do you know who engaged the ‘safe mode,’ as you called it?” Shiro’s face was grim, which meant that he looked about the same as he always did.

“Negative, Black Paladin.”

“Can you find out?”

“Negative.”

Allura’s voice cut into the comms before anyone else could respond.

“Computer, access to the comms revoked.” There was a soft click and a ‘bewww’ noise, and then silence.

“Why’d you do that?” snapped Pidge indignantly. “She was helping us out!”

“In case you’d forgotten, she’s still a threat and we’re in too much trouble already.  We don’t need to worry about a computer who shouldn’t even exist, too.  Stop chatting and find a way out of there.  The Galra have the run of the place up here!”

Shay interrupted politely and suggested that she reach out to the other Balmerans, which the team readily agreed to.  Within a few ticks, Allura cut back into the comms and announced that the Galra were heading for the lions.  

While troubling snippets of conversation from the Alteans slipped into the comm feed, the Paladins waited for the Balmerans to make it to the core.  The sound of warping metal was rarely a cause for celebration, but at that moment, Lance knew he’d be willing to give the parade over to Shay’s family and the awful, torturous sound of metal being twisted by a planet-sized fungus.

The paladins escaped to their lions and the surface, where they promptly entered into a fight.  It was fast and somewhat easy; a textbook example of the Conservation of Ninja.

Of course, that was when a massive metal box just  _had_ to fall out of the sky and sit ominously on the desolate Balmera surface.  Lance could practically feel it gearing up for a showdown.

“Paladins, return to the Castle immediately!” Allura ordered over the comms.

When all seven inhabitants of the Castle were gathered in the bridge, Keith’s irritation was evident.

“Why’d you call us back? We could have taken that thing down, we did it before!” He stood as if he was prepared to prove his point by beating Allura in a fist fight, but he wasn’t ready to be so obvious about it.  His fists were down, but by no means passive.

Allura made no attempt to placate him.  They stared each other down unproductively until Coran interjected.

“Actually, I asked the Princess to ask you to return.  Just because we’ve seen something  _ like  _ this before doesn’t mean that it  _ is  _ the same.  It’s like when I was a young Altean and I played out in the red fields of the royal castle: One duflax might want to eat from your hand but another-”

“Coran!” said Keith waspishly.

“Yes, right.  Well, the point is that we don’t know that it’s the same sort of thing.  And to assume that it is is a beginner mistake.  We need to stay here and strategize.”

The team looked out of the windows at the ominous box.  The walls fell away to reveal something that seemed nothing at all like the robeast they had fought on Arus.

“Quiznak,” grumbled Allura.

“You’re telling me,” Lance replied as he stared in horror at the massive, red murder-machine.

The murder-machine came online and began to glow on its two head-eyes, its chest-eye, and every single arm-eye.

“This’ll be a bitch to fight,” Pidge said under her breath.

“Computer?” Six heads swiveled to stare at Lance in a grab-bag of irritation, apprehension, and fear.

“Present, Blue Paladin.”

“Do you know anything we can do to stop this thing from beating the heck out of us?” There was the sound of numbers being run and scenarios being devised and discarded in a matter of seconds; the sound of a computer thinking.

“I do not have the information to answer accurately, Blue Paladin.  Permission to elaborate?” Lance glanced at Allura, who nodded resolutely.  He realized easily that her agreement was out of desperation rather than approval, but he would take what he could get.

“Granted.”

“I have scanned the hostile and its vulnerabilities.  It has the capacity to kill the Balmera upon which we currently rest.  The inhabitants of the Balmera will need to either be evacuated or the Balmera rejuvenated.  The hostile is armed with weapons of the highest current order.  The recharge rate is consistent with current Galra handweapons- impressive for weapons of their size.  They should also be the most vulnerable of the hostile.  The armor encasing it is of a similar durability to that of the Castle.

“However.” The paladins groaned. “I do not know of your capabilities, and am unable to calculate a likelihood of survival, success, or individual injury.  I can make no recommendations as of yet.”

“Thanks a lot,” grumbled Keith and Allura’s mouth thinned.  Lance had grown to recognize that as a clear warning for danger, even if nothing happened immediately.

After a unanimous agreement, the paladins went back outside.  They returned after approximately twenty minutes of no headway whatsoever and a tiny bit of awesomeness at the end on the part of the Balmera.  No one was really going to admit that the paladins did jack shit, and the one thing that they might have done was actually done by Allura, the unspoken badass.

“Well, this was fun, I’m going to bed,” said Keith as he turned down the hallway to his room.

“Good plan.” Shiro rested his hands on Pidge and Hunk’s shoulders. “Let’s get the rest of you to bed as well.”

“Actually,” began Hunk a bit nervously.  Lance could tell that he wasn’t afraid of Shiro, he was just feeling too twitchy to reasonably sleep. “Actually, I wanted to cook a bit before I went to bed.”

“Alright, just don’t stay up too late,” Shiro replied, nodding. “Set a timer or something.”

“Oh, yeah and I wanted to-” Pidge wasn’t even given the chance to finish her sentence.

“No.”

“But, Shiro-”

“You’ve barely been sleeping almost since we got here.  Go to sleep.  Don’t make me take your laptop away.”

“Fine,” grumbled Pidge as she sulked away.

Shiro turned quickly to Lance and he couldn’t quite feel the same fear as he had when his mother turned to him like that.

“What about you? Any plans?”

“No, I really just want to go to bed right now.  See you in the morning.”

“Thank goodness.  See you tomorrow.” They parted ways and Lance finally felt like he was allowed to look tired.  He slumped, put his hands in his pockets, and walked heavily.  The wall seemed to be making an effort to be at his arm constantly, and he made it to his room sooner than he really expected to be.  The familiar “whoosh” of his door reached his ears and he shuffled over to his closet.

The lock came up as it always did, but it had an unusual message on it.

“You did well today.  Keep healthy, sleep well, and take care.”

A few letters flicked into Altean characters and back again, and Lance didn’t pay it much mind.  He smiled, closed the message, and unlocked his closet to grab his pajamas and headphones.

His bed seemed more comfortable than usual, his blanket warmer, and the entire room seemed to feel more like home than it ever had before.

_ Hell yeah.  I did well today. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all, folks!
> 
> Seriously, please leave comments/kudos! They mean a lot and give me feedback on what's working and what's stupid, so if you do, then thank you so much and I will reply at my nearest convenience!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things begin to get moving.

When Lance woke up, the first thing he was aware of was a flurry of activity coming from down the hall. The paladins’ cabins were far from soundproof.

He turned over and pulled his blanket closer to his chin. His door opened not a moment later and someone skidded to a stop at his back.

“Lance!” Ugh. The gremlin. “Get up! We got a message from an unknown source and we’re trying to figure out what it means.”

Lance grumbled and turned to his short teammate.

“Can I get dressed first?” Pidge made a face and a break for the door.

“Egh. Please.” She disappeared into the hallway and the door closed behind her.

Lance pushed back his blanket and sat on the edge of his bed for a dobash, trying to wake up. He rubbed at the sleep in his eyes and stretched for a bit longer than was really necessary. He didn’t want to deal with another catastrophe. Sadly, and it really was very sad, what with this being the first night he’d gotten a good sleep since the regeneration pod debacle, he was a paladin of Voltron and catastrophes were an occupational hazard.

After dressing himself, Lance jogged half-heartedly out the door to meet Pidge who was fiddling with a small metal cube. She put it away as soon as he came out of his room.

“You took your time. Come on!”

They took off at a purposeful, if not all together hurried, pace. They arrived at Allura’s room and stared at a computer station near the door.

“Okay, now that we’re all here, can you please tell us what’s going on?” Keith’s tone indicated that he’d been rather impatient about the whole thing, and also that Allura hadn’t gone into any detail more than ‘we have an anonymous message, I need information.’

“Well, every time I leave I lock my door at this station.” Allura gestured towards the screen. “This morning, there was a note here.”

“What, like a post-it note?” asked Lance.

“No, and that’s the troubling thing. Someone’s figured out how to send messages through the computer system.”

“Is that weird?” Pidge asked, and Lance got the sense she knew how to do this too.

“Yes and no,” Coran replied. “Allura and I know how to because it was an essential part of operating on a massive ship with a crew of several hundred. But we never taught the five of you because we have other, more direct ways to contact each other, and it just seemed less important in the face of teaching you how to pilot the lions and form Voltron. We had and have bigger things to worry about.”

“What does it say?” Hunk peered around Allura and Shiro to the screen, but he couldn’t get quite the right look at it.

“Stop shoving and you can see for yourself,” Allura chided, although she didn’t seem too irritated. The two adults stepped to the side and let the younger paladins scramble for a spot to look at it.

“Can you help me?” was written in glowing Altean blue, and the characters flickered between English and Altean.

“This seems pretty straight forward,” Lance said pragmatically. “Just say yes and figure out what they need.”

“I don’t know, Lance.” Hunk’s caution was typically a good reminder that running headlong into danger wasn’t the best idea, but it could also be wildly irritating when he seemed to not have the interests of other people at heart. Lance knew that Hunk really cared for the people closest to him; he’d seen proof firsthand. But when it came to people outside of his friends and family, he knew what his priorities were. It wasn’t that Lance entirely disagreed, but he had to admit to some part of himself that he was more motivated to save random strangers than his best friend in yellow.

“We should get more information before we come to a decision,” Shiro said in his ‘this really is what we’re doing and you better fucking listen’ voice. “Now shouldn’t we ought to get down to the detainment room to interrogate Sendak? Princess, you said something about how we could get something out of him, even now.”

“Princess, I really don’t think your father would approve-” Coran was cut off by Allura who seemed rather more dangerous than Lance was comfortable with.

“Do you know something else about my father, Coran?” Coran looked a bit concerned as Allura’s face turned to steel. “He’s not here.”

She strode away towards the detainment room, and Shiro followed her instantly. Hunk and Pidge trailed after them anxiously and Coran sighed before grudgingly tagging along as well.

“Keith,” Lance said quietly, just serious enough to make the mullet-head stop in his tracks.

“Yeah, Lance?”

“You’ve been awfully quiet. What do you think happened?” Keith leaned into the wall and released a short, exasperated breath.

“I don’t know. I mean, it seems innocent enough…,” he trailed off as if trying to pick his words carefully. “I don’t know.”

“Then what’s on your mind? You seem really bothered.”

“Nothing, okay?!” Keith exploded. “Nothing! I don’t know!”

“Okay! Okay! Jeez. I just wanted to know what you thought about. You don’t need to act like I’m shining a bright light in your eyes.” Keith shouldered past Lance and stomped down the hall after the other Castle passengers. Lance groaned, rolled his head, and set off in the same direction.

* * *

 

It turned out that the memory extraction was one of the most boring things to watch in the universe, and Lance resorted to impromptu exercise while absolutely nothing happened with the memory capsule. One at a time, the red, yellow, and green paladins disappeared and it wasn’t long before Coran ushered Allura to bed. Only Shiro and Lance remained.

Lance rolled to his feet and stretched.

“Shiro, is it alright with you if I go now? Call me if anything happens.”

Shiro stayed rooted to the spot, his eyes dead set on the prisoner before him.

“Shiro? Are you okay?” He gave a jolt as if he had been shaken awake.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s fine.”

“Alright, let me know if anything happens.”

Lance moved down the hallway with reluctance, occasionally looking back to check on Shiro, who didn’t move at all.

Lance found himself in the bridge after a while and he sat on the steps again. The other steps though. He didn’t want to repeat the last time he’d sat in here and asked the castle for help.

“Castle?”

“Hello, Blue Paladin.”

“Castle, can you tell me who sent the message to Allura?” He leaned back onto his elbows and looked up at the power crystal.

“No.”

Lance sat up again, alarmed.

“What do you mean?”

“I have been locked out of many major systems by the Princess Allura.”

He scrambled to his feet and fumbled to figure out what to do. “And that includes communication. Of course! She locked you out of the comms. But if you were let back in, could you figure out who sent it?”  
There was a beat of silence and then the crystal glowed again.

“There is a one in two hundred thirty-seven chance that-” The speech system whirred and died. The crystal didn’t dim, but the castle didn’t continue speaking.

“Castle!” Lance cried. “Castle, are you there?”

Not even the rumble of a computer replied.

“Quiznak.”

* * *

 

Lance grabbed his bayard and uniform, mostly for the shield and the comm system. He had determined maybe an hour before that that the castle was too big for him to find Coran. He could find the other paladins alright, in all likelihood. Hunk was eating, as he would. Keith was training, as he did. God knew why, he was already better than three fifths of Voltron. And Pidge, of course, was fiddling around in the lab.

But where on the castle was Coran? He could be doing anything right now and he knew the castle infinitely better than Lance did. Regardless, Coran was the person he needed to talk to. Coran was the only person who could help him get the castle back online and figure it all out. The message, the power failure, everything.

He wandered a bit, first along the the paths he knew well, to the regeneration pod room, to the dining room, and back to the paladins’ quarters. Failing that, he took to roaming quiet corridors flanked by empty rooms.

“Coran?”

Nothing.

Lance sighed and sat down. The rooms were beyond creepy and he didn’t want to be in them any more than he had to. It wasn’t exactly anything tangible, just a feeling of being under surveillance and that every vacant room was supposed to be filled with… Something. Or maybe someone.

The lights of the hallway flickered and seemed to be in their death throes. Lance clutched his bayard closer to his chest.

“Coran? Is that you?”

He peered closer at a humanoid at the end of the corridor, and it seemed a bit too tall to be Coran, and maybe a bit bulkier, but maybe Coran had gotten into armor of some sort. For an indiscernible reason. That, if it was true, probably meant that something had gone very, very wrong.

The light flickered again once, twice, and died.

Lance activated his flashlight and sprinted off down the hallway to where he’d last seen the humanoid.

“Help!” Was that Coran? It sounded like him, but there was something off. “Help, I’m trapped in the airlock!” That explained it. Surely an airlock would distort a voice somehow.

“I’m on my way!” Quicker than Lance could really follow, he was trapped, and he had thirty ticks to get out.

Wait! Was that… It was!

“Keith!” And there the angry mullet was, pursued by a training android which was a lot more battered than Lance had ever seen them. Usually they disappeared after a few hits, but from what Lance could see, this one had taken a beating. “Keith, help!”

Keith stabbed the androids shoulder with his bayard and pinned it to the wall so that he could turn to Lance.

“What are you doing in there?” he shouted.

“Can we discuss this after I get out of here?” Keith rolled his eyes in response and slammed his palm into a terminal command to open the airlock just in time. “What happened to you?”

The android twitched and spasmed as if trying to make an escape. It’s heart didn’t seem to be in it, and Keith took out his knife and stabbed it through the eye, which seemed to hit its CPU.

“I was on the training deck, I was on level three, and then it didn’t end when I ordered it to end. It started malfunctioning, I guess? It wasn’t as effective when I left the deck. But I guess it couldn’t disappear outside of the deck, because I hit it with even more than usual.” He twisted to yank his bayard out of the wall. “What about you?”

“I heard Coran’s voice saying he was trapped, and then I got stuck in there! Do you know where Coran is, by the way? I’ve been looking for him.”

“No, no idea. Is that why you’re in full armor?” They stood up in unison. Lance idly wondered when they’d been doing anything in unison, or if they always had but they were never doing things together.

“Well I’m sorry if I forgot to bring a flashlight with me when we were abducted by giant alien robot cats.”

“Alright, fair enough.” Keith’s bayard melted into red light. “We should find the others and make a plan of attack.”

“I bet we can find them easily enough. Do you know whether the detainment room is closer or farther to us than the Green Lion’s bay?”

“No clue. But you can talk to the castle and it- she responds helpfully. Why don’t you just ask her and we can use a map? That seems like it would be easier than just blundering around the castle.” Lance started walking down the hallway and checked over his shoulder to see if Keith was following him.

“No can do, mullet. She shut down earlier when I was trying to do that. Something’s wrong with her.” Keith caught up with him explosively and stared as they hurried through the castle.

“That’s just great. If something’s wrong with the castle, what can we do against whatever caused that?” They paused just briefly, before rushing onwards.

“We need to find either Allura or Coran as soon as possible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all for the chapter! Thank you for reading my drivel, and I hope you come back for more. Any comments, theories, or kudos are greatly appreciated, and thanks so much to EmperorSnarkon (launchmeintospace) for all of their nice comments!

**Author's Note:**

> And that's all for the first chapter! The POV will be somewhat fluid because I enjoy seeing everyone's perspective on the situation. I was going to write this from the beginning of the series at first but it didn't work so this is the new and improved version! Thank you for reading and I hope you stick around for the next part!


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